


We Shall Not Cease From Exploration

by galacticproportions



Series: Veterans' Affairs [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Accidental voyeurism (very brief), Anal Sex, Commitment, Established Relationship, FaceFucking, Family, Growing up and growing old, Intimacy, M/M, Masturbation, Not as much sex as you might think despite the tags, Oral Sex, Veterans' affairs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 20:14:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7375837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticproportions/pseuds/galacticproportions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Normally--except what's normal for them anymore, six months apart and six more months apart before that and, most of all, peacetime?--Finn would take that and run with it, but now he just frowns more. "I'm not meeting your entire family without a shirt on."</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Shall Not Cease From Exploration

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gloss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/gifts).



> This is for gloss with affection and gratitude for their delightful "Your important years, your life", for all their other moving, hot and brilliant stories about these two people, and for encouragement to finish this story. 
> 
> The title and final quotation are from T.S. Eliot's "Little Gidding." Eliot was a pompous, racist pain in the ass and some of his work shows it, but he had some good moments and this is one of them, for me.
> 
> Walk-on character Jennicet's real-world namesake, Jennicet Gutierrez, is a good person to look up if you don't know who she is.
> 
> This takes place directly after "Absence Makes the Heart."

It's almost time to light the lamps and open the night windows. This is a time of day Poe's loved since he was little: when the air cools and the day changes over from life and work in public to something more complicated and intimate, the hour when things start to happen. It's when people gather to eat or to argue; if you have guests, that's when they arrive, and if you're meeting someone on the quiet, that's when you start counting the minutes until you can leave, or until they tap on the sill.

Now the person he's been waiting for is here, and so far it seems to be going well. They rode back from the spaceport last night on the family's old speeder, Finn's thighs gripping Poe's from behind so that by the time they got back they were already buzzing and wanting, half-collapsing off the bike, stumbling across the courtyard and into the kitchen. Poe stood aside as Finn held out a hand saying, "Mr. Dameron," and was met with a fierce hug: " _Kes_ , son, please, I've been wanting to meet you these twelve years. Thanks for taking care of this idiot for me. Go get settled in, and I'll see you in the morning."

Up in Poe's old room, the glow-paint of the star charts on the ceiling faded but still glimmering and the forest breeze coming in through the night windows, they drifted in and out of sleep and kissing and touching and sleep. Poe woke a little too warm and dry-mouthed and having to piss, and didn't want to move away from the solid fact of Finn, laid flat out on his back as if in his old stormtrooper bunk, breathing evenly, real and undeniable. Then he opened his eyes and smiled sweetly and said, "Hey," and pulled Poe into him, and Poe had to extricate himself to pee before picking up, damply and lazily, where they left off the night before.

Then it was a day of introductions. After breakfast, he brought Finn to the Force tree in the yard and watched him lay a hand on the trunk, angle his head a little like he does when he's listening; watched awe wash over Finn's face and feel the same awe within himself just at the sight. They walked the borders of the farm where Kes has worked for years as an irrigation engineer, which is almost as new to Poe as it is to Finn--this is only the second time he's been back since Kes finished his apprentice and freelance years and settled here. Poe pointed out the roadside plants that give you a rash and the colorful flags that indicate grazing routes, and they stopped at the stand down the road for his favorite leafrolls ("All those years we were eating ration bars, this is what I was comparing them to"). They spent the hot part of the day under the tree again, kissing and dozing and telling stories of their months apart.

Now it's cooling off again, and soon the loud, loving, wide-ranging, loosely but strongly knit crowd of people that Poe means when he says "family" will gather in the courtyard to cook and eat and talk and dance. And meet Finn, who is standing in the center of the room at the moment, ducking his head a little to the sloped ceiling, holding a shirt up to his beautiful chest and frowning. Poe volunteers, "You could just go like that. No one who sees you shirtless could possibly like you _less_."

Normally--except what's normal for them anymore, six months apart and six more months apart before that and, most of all, peacetime?--Finn would take that and run with it, but now he just frowns more. "I'm not meeting your entire family without a shirt on."

"Joking. I'm joking. You're really worried, huh? What are you worried about?"

"I don't know exactly."

 "Tell me when you do know. Maybe I can help."

 "Maybe," Finn says. "We should go down, probably," and he pulls the shirt around him and ties it closed. Poe moves to embrace him. "See, you look great," and he smoothes the fabric along Finn's sides, trailing his hands down over thighs and ass--these pants are tantalizingly tight. Finn cradles his head for a kiss, which becomes increasingly involved. "Or we could stay up here," Finn suggests hopefully.

 "Quit stalling," Poe says, and then feels bad about it.

 Kes, or someone, must have lit the firepit a while ago, because it's down to glowing coals so they can cook over it. Skeins of smoke hang between them and the blue-purple of the sky and the crescent of the gas giant. This is the perfect time to be on Yavin 4, the cusp between the rainy and dry seasons, the days before the all-hands-on-deck of the harvest when the skies are clear and not punishing you one way or another. They've set up a few cool lights on poles around the courtyard, and chairs and cushions and benches. On one of them two round young women are--there's no other way to put it--canoodling, until one of them leaps up and shrieks Poe's name and barrels into him almost the way BB-8 would, except that her center of gravity's a little higher.

 "Tuli?" he says, stunned, "you got ... older," and the probably-girlfriend, still on the bench, cackles. Tuli says unrepentantly, "This is Taresh," and Poe says, "This is Finn," and Tuli says, "Ooh," exactly the way she did last time he saw her, when she was about a third this height and he let her sit in his first X-wing. Everybody does the "good to meet you" thing, and Poe can feel Finn relax, like if this is all it is maybe it won't be so bad.

 He knows his family can be a little much, even for each other. He's primed the ones he's already seen: "Don't ask him about First Order stuff, don't tell him how brave he is, maybe skip the war entirely. All the ex-stormtrooper veterans' stuff he's been doing is fair game and so are stories about how stupid I was when I was a kid, actually maybe stick to those," but he knows them and he knows those lines will get blurred over the course of the evening, especially since the family includes people too young to remember the war well and people too old to care what they ask anybody.

 At least they don't have to worry about the M-question: marriage on Yavin 4 is very much an elective procedure, and most of the couples or triads or loose affiliations he grew up around weren't married at all. General nosiness, though. And volume. High volume. And in this context, exhortations to drink more. Well, Finn cut his post-First-Order teeth on the pilots' mess; that will have been good practice.

 Poe's already been here a month and other than a few city cousins like Tuli, most of the people here have already welcomed him. They're here for Finn, and at first they mostly just hug him or kiss his cheek or slap his shoulder; the questions, if any, will come when everyone is trapped with food in their laps. He murmurs to Finn between the greetings and shouts of glee and ribald comments, which he didn't even bother trying to get them not to make, "If you need to tap out, just do it, don't worry. My room's open. You want me to get you some food? Oh wait, there's one thing we need to do first."

 Most of the elders have swept in and settled into the row of chairs along the wall now, and they're graciously accepting bowls of food from grandchildren or great-grandchildren. "You do sort of have to do this," Poe says, taking Finn's arm. "Protocol, respect, that kind of thing. Just grab a bowl from the stack--" he does this himself as he talks--"and put some food in it--" he holds the bowl out to Usnavi, the cousin who's tending the firepit--"and offer it to the next person in line. I'll introduce you to everybody as we go."

 He checks to make sure Finn's at his shoulder, and they duck through what's rapidly becoming a crowd. He introduces Finn down the line--"This is my Abuela Eva, and this is my Auntie Shoban, and this is my Tío Houma, and this..." and Finn gravely holds the steaming bowl out to Poe's Tante Araminta, who is almost small enough to curl up and fit inside it. "This is the one?" she asks, pulling Poe down by the lapel.

 "This is the one, Tante Ari."

 She lets him go and grabs at Finn's hand, which he gives her. "If he gives you any trouble," she says, looking Finn in the face with her good eye, "you send him straight to me and I'll make him wish he was never born."

 "I'll keep it in mind, ma'am," Finn says in his most sincere voice.

 "You call me Tante Ari, just like he does."

 "Yes, Tante Ari."

 "And you come and see me."

 "Tomorrow, Tante Ari," Poe promises hastily. "We'll bring you oba jam and you can tell us stories. Finn needs to meet more people, we'll see you tomorrow." He steers Finn away with a hand on the small of his back. "Sorry. It's not old age, either, she's always been like that."

 "I thought she made some very good points," Finn says. "And whatever's in that bowl smells great. Do I get to eat some now?"

 "Yeah, we've paid our dues." They return to the firepit, but no sooner have they filled their own bowls than a play-cousin from Poe's own generation gets Finn firmly by his free arm, saying, "We're sorry, but we're gonna need to tell you a few things about Poe before the night goes any further," and leads him firmly away to the rest of that crowd--all people who stayed in the system, kept growing food or installing plumbing or programming simulators or delivering babies, scraping by in their own ways while elsewhere in the galaxy, he and Finn were fighting a war. He went out drinking with most of them last time he was here. It's not that they have nothing to talk about with him--they have a lot to talk about, actually, and so does he, it's just that it's hard for them to listen to each other.

  _Enough with the brooding, Dameron,_ he says to himself sternly, and goes to eat next to Kes's old friend and sometime lover Atash, who taught him to cook--both Shara and Kes were hopeless--and to do push-ups the right way. Atash fought alongside Kes and knows how to be quiet with another person. They have a brief and friendly conversation by means of their eyebrows while their mouths are full of food, and Poe tries not to think about, not to _see_ Atash's stoop, the second hearing aid when last visit--just a year ago!--there was only one, the firelight glancing off his scalp.

 Then a well-meaning auntie draws Poe into conversation about what he's going to do next, which is a conversation he absolutely does not want to have until he has it with Finn. It takes time to smooth-talk himself out of that--frankly, he'd rather be extricating himself from a blown cover on a recon mission. A couple of tiny cousins, a brother and an older sister, come to him to broker an uneasy peace over who can jump higher, and then Lozelle wants to play and sing together, so they go a couple rounds.

 The next time he catches sight of Finn, he's leaning back against the courtyard wall, half-blocked from Poe's view by the shoulder of someone who's talking at him, adding their voice to the racket. Someone's woven him a circlet of the feathery grasses that grow by the entryway, and someone else has deposited a baby in his lap. The baby seems to be sleeping; Finn's elbow bends under their downy head with easy grace.

 Poe yearns toward him, wishes for a moment that the courtyard and the fire and the many generations of people would all rise like smoke into the night and leave the two of them in an open field, under the sky. Along the far wall, the ends of the elders' fat cigars pulse like little hearts.

 Later, up in the room, Finn is quiet. Poe leaves a little space between their bodies when he strips out of his party outfit and lies down on the bed, but Finn stretches out an arm to pull him against his side. Underneath the smells of smoke and food and the perfume of someone who hugged one or both of them, Finn's own scent simultaneously stirs and reassures Poe as it always does. He says, "How you doing?

 "I don't know." One of the best things about Finn, Poe reflects, is that he always answers that question as precisely as he can, and never says he's okay when he's not. "Holding Atansio was nice."

 "Holding who? Oh, the baby? That must be Atash's grandbaby, he said he had a new one. I haven't see him yet." Poe doesn't really like kids until they're old enough to argue with you in sentences.

 "I might have to take it back about your Tante Ari and her good points. Five separate people, not including her, told me that if you aren't good to me they'll kick your ass."

 "They're saying they approve of you. If they were nervous about you it'd be the other way around."

 "Yeah, I got that. But does it mean they don't approve of you?"

 "No, it's--"

 "Because if it's that, _I'll_ kick _their_ ass. Asses. Collective ass." That's when Poe realizes that some of the exhortations to drink may have taken effect. "I know people have all different ways of dealing with each other," Finn's saying. "You don't have to tell me that. This is just a new way, for me. You always say you love them. Do they love you?"

 "Yes," Poe says firmly. "This is just their style. It's like Pava. Did you ever hear Pava say a nice thing about me? Or to me? But she always has my back--"

 "--except when she's dragging you into dangerous asteroid runs--"

 "--those people needed those supplies, and I needed to fly, and I don't want to talk about that anymore. Anyway, they were giving you permission to ... have your back ... gotten ... by them. Sorry, that didn't come out right, but you know what I mean. They were saying that they're your family too."

 "Huh," Finn says to the stars on the ceiling. Poe stays quiet for a while, in case Finn has more questions, but when he speaks again it's to say, "Let's fuck, can we? I missed you so much and I'm not done realizing we're actually together."

 "We are, though," Poe says, kissing him and reaching over to caress his chest and stomach. "That's good, right? Whatever else is...however it is?"

 "Yeah, it's good, it's the best." Finn's mouth tastes like the strong local beer and his hands grow more insistent, pulling and rolling Poe on top of him, gripping his ass and pressing Poe into him, the best way, the right way, the two of them the way they should be. "What do you feel like," Finn says, kissing along his ear.

 "Lemme use my mouth on you a minute." He inches down Finn's body, trailing kisses, fills his mouth with Finn's cock and takes his time, listening for the changes of breath, riding out the motions of Finn's hips, pulling off to lick along the vein and around the head before swallowing Finn back down, until he feels hands on his shoulders dragging him up. "You wanna ride me? Because I want you to."

 "Hell yes. Should be some stuff under--yeah, here it is," swinging the loose wall panel aside on its nail. Finn laughs. "That's from when you were what, thirteen?"

 "Nineteen," Poe says indignantly, "I was sixteen when I left for the Academy, and I was still coming home until..." he trails off, finding that he doesn't want to talk about that either. "Anyway, it was mostly for my...personal use. I mean, not with any other person. I didn't really pick up speed until I got to the Academy."

 "Yeah?" Finn's tone goes low and interested. "Why don't you show me?"

 "Uh, yeah, sure, if you want." Why is he embarrassed? Usually if they're going to fuck, Finn warming him up is part of the fun, but it's not like this is outside their usual repertoire. Maybe it's the whole childhood-bedroom thing. He slicks his fingers and straddles Finn's thighs, tilting to find the best angle and wanting to look away. Finn says, "Look at me while you do it," and the combination of heat and memory and love and, let's be real, a little shame goes straight from his thrusting fingertips up his spine.

 He reaches for his cock with his other hand and it is and isn't like being sixteen, gripping and twisting and sweating, chasing the feeling he wants. He's not as flexible as he used to be and he knows he'll feel this in his shoulders tomorrow. More importantly, instead of this or that fantasy person Finn's eyes are locked on his, their gaze half-shadowed, real and inescapable. Finn's stroking his own cock, slowly and without urgency, and says, "This was a great idea. This is great. Seeing you like this."

 "You'll get used to it again," Poe manages.

 Finn's grip on his waist is sudden, a surprise. "No way. No. I will _never_ get used to it. All those nights when maybe you weren't coming back, or I wasn't, or maybe neither of us were? When we were dodging blaster bolts and sneaking around and killing strangers and I don't know, sitting in _strategy briefings_ instead of doing this? This whole last year when I got to see you once? _That's_ what I got used to. This, I could never have enough of. Ugh, just fucking sit on it already, I need to know you're here."

 By any rights a speech like that should kill the mood. Poe's touched and amused and eager to oblige. He repositions and lowers himself, slowly, stretching full and aching, and starts to work up and down, still slowly, then faster as Finn angles his hips, their motions working toward each other, sending hot chills throughout Poe's frame with every thrust. He watches Finn's face lose its purpose and determination and become something softer, wilder, more abandoned. That's what he craves, that's what he'll never get tired of. The one who trusts him. The one he trusts.

 In the morning, they eat with Kes before he heads out to check the dry-season adjustments to the waterways, and take the speeder over to Tante Araminta's compound. The woman who's been sitting with her kisses his cheek, and Finn's, and says, "If you two don't mind I'll step out long enough to smoke and sober up."

 "Happy to, Jennicet," Poe says. "Anything we should know?"

 "Pain syrup's in the high cupboard, with the right size spoon, and there's food in the conservator and bread in the breadbox. Fresher's in the little courtyard and she might need help. Tante Ari, make sure you tell these boys what you need _when_ you need it, okay? Don't try to tough it out. I'll be back in a little bit."

 They eat oba jam on bread, and of course Tante Ari, who lived through the Empire's zenith, has to say, "They told me you were one of those stormtroopers."

 Finn says calmly, "I was, but I left a long time ago." It's one of the routine things that Poe's heard him say, the phrases that let the person know that Finn knows who he is and if they want a fuss or a fight they won't get one. He knows Finn can handle himself and has had to deal with more nonsense, and more aggression, than Poe's ever witnessed directly. He still hates being around for it, and for even this mild probe to come from within his family--the people who are supposed to be making Finn welcome--feels like a betrayal. He says, "Tante Ari, there are no stormtroopers anymore. Just people who used to be."

"I know that," she snaps. "Teveret always says I don't keep up, but I do."

 Teveret was the love and companion of the second half of Araminta's life; she's been dead a few years now. Poe says, "Tell Finn about Teveret, he won't get to meet her"-- he'll catch Finn up later--and Tante Ari launches eagerly into stories of their life together, Teveret's work to change bad sharecropping and farm labor laws elsewhere on the moon, a picnic in the mountains (which she tells about twice). That keeps them going for a while until Tante Ari says, "I have to shit."

 "C'mon, I'll go with you." He takes her arm and walks with her at her pace out to the little courtyard where the baths and toilets are; he helps her squat, helps her clean herself, walks her back in. She doesn't seem embarrassed, and he wonders if she used to be and has had to give it up. Her weight on his arm is light, her joints thickened and contracted but the rest of her bones thin. Finn looks a question and he signs _All well,_ one of the few stormtrooper handsigns he knows.

 A little while later, Jennicet returns and they chat with her for a while--she's Teveret's grandniece and has carried on her work--and take their leave. Poe explains about Teveret while he checks the fuel levels and the gearbox for the speeder, and feels Finn draw into himself again, a little: "She doesn't remember. And you don't remind her?"

 "She does sometimes. But when she doesn't, no, nobody reminds her. It'd be--we'd have to argue with her about it, and she still wouldn't really get it, and she wouldn't remember the argument either, so we'd have to do it over and over again."

 Finn nods slowly. "Right, that'd be cruel, I get that. But living in a lie, not being able to get to the truth--" His eyes go far away, and Poe touches his hand. "I don't think it's like conditioning," he says. "It's more like she lives in the present, but not always the same present that we're in. She's lived a long life, I think it's okay for the rest of us to pick up the slack for her."

 Finn is very quiet while he straps his helmet on. "Hey," Poe says. "There's a clearing in the forest I wanted to show you, you know the one I mentioned in that comm I sent, you still wanna see it?" It occurs to him that if Finn says yes--the comm was very explicit--it'll be the second time in two days they've opted for sex over conversation, which is a small sample size but maybe not the best pattern to get into now that they're back together.

 Finn says, "I'd like that," and they straddle the bike, Poe once again feeling the strong grip of Finn's thighs from behind and realizing that he's grinning to himself, his doubts whipping away in the wind of their passing. By the time they get a ways into the forest he can also feel Finn's hard-on pressing against his ass and is about ready to fling the bike aside and get on his knees right there, but he settles for a long kiss after tying up the speeder and says, "C'mon. We're close but I always tied up here and did the last part on foot, it made it more exciting. More clandestine."

 "Always? I thought you said there weren't that many people." Birds and insects hush as they make their way down a half-grown-over trail, the smell of ferns and mosses and wet soil rising up around them.

 "There were a few people. One person for kind of a long time--well, a year or so. Just exploring, trying stuff out. Don't touch that, it's sticky as fuck, you'll never get it off your hands." He moves the vine aside with the leaf of an innocuous fern.

 "Wish I'd known you then."

 "You say that, but I was a little shit."

"Wish I'd had the chance to _be_ a little shit."

 "I wish you had too," Poe says, stopping and turning and taking Finn's face in his hands. He almost never says things like that anymore; whatever he's feeling, he must be feeling it a lot. Finn kisses back with gentleness at first, then almost with fury, tongue tasting then searching, his fingers clamped in Poe's hair. "Are we close?" he asks, and Poe pulls back, confused, and Finn specifies, "to where we're going. Because--"

 "I know. Me too." He takes Finn's hand, even though the trail isn't really wide enough to walk side by side, so he's half-leading him past the twinned tree-trunks that serve as a landmark, the canopy arching and thinning above them, and the undergrowth breaks--

 --and it takes a full minute for him to realize what his eyes are seeing, for the golden-brown and deep-brown shapes in the center of the clearing to resolve into one woman kneeling up, another crouching down and fervently eating the kneeling woman's pussy. It takes even longer to realize that the crouching woman is Tuli and the kneeling woman is her probably-girlfriend from the night before, and by the time that sinks in, Finn's already pulling him back into the cover of the undergrowth, biting a knuckle to quiet his laughter.

 Poe's face is flaming--Tuli's just a baby and anyway this is _his_ clearing and now his hard-on is totally gone. They've retreated to whispering distance by the time he un-regresses--progresses?--from thinking like his sixteen-year-old self. "So much for my triumphant return," he says in Finn's ear, and Finn snorts and puts an arm around him. "So much for the blow job I was promised."

 "It's just a postponement. I'll find us another spot." Where, though? The forest floor is thick with fungus and insects in the leaf litter, and even leaning against a tree can land you a visit from a column of biting ants. As a kid, he never explored much beyond the clearing; there are a couple of side trails coming up whose direction and destination he doesn't know. He motions Finn along one of them. "You really can't take a step around here without tripping over someone from the Dameron-Bey-Paral-Sarkeesian-and-sundries clan," he says, glancing back to invite Finn to smile at that, keep the jokes going, and seeing instead the face Finn makes when he's trying to figure out how to say something. "What is it?"

 "You kinda just said it. They're in everything. They're everywhere. It's unsettling. Shit. It sounds like I'm saying bad things about your family."

 It does, and the defensive aggression has been flaring up as Finn's been talking, but Poe breathes it down and waits.

 "I just mean I'm unsettled. I feel like I did--" Finn heaves a sigh--"when I first woke up on base. I don't know how it works. And it's like they're your responsibility, but also not, and I can't tell if it's reasonable or--and then your Tante Ari and Teveret--" He pauses. "I'm not putting this well."

 "Yeah. No. You're not. Are you saying you're jealous? Or you're worried about what you've taken on?" This doesn't come out like a joke, not at all. He says, "Listen, I think I hear water, and I could use some. This is probably an animal trail, that's probably why it's here. Let's follow it a little more. I want to think about what you said."

 They walk with the quietness of people who've had to be silent in the woods in order to survive, so they can hear the noise of the water rise and coalesce before they see it: a stream running down over mossy rocks, clear brown to the bottom. Poe squats and splashes his face and drinks. Finn says, "It's good water?"

  _Good_ meaning _safe,_ left over from a hundred missions. _Looking good? Yeah, looking good. Does it have good cover? Good intel, though? We good?_ "Yeah, it's flowing from the west and there's no farms or industries over there for a while, and it's flowing into the river, not out of it. And there's stuff growing in it so it's not toxic in its own right. Have some, dip your head, it feels good."

 "See? You know that. You _know_ this place, these people--you don't even know you know them, you just do." Finn gets down to stream level and drinks, the water silvering his cupped hands, and rises wet-faced. "The stuff I know like that, no one should have to know."

 "It helps other people, though. What you know, the work you do with it." Poe guesses they're having this conversation now. He says, "I didn't tell you yet what I talked about with Rey at the Temple. You wanna hear that now?"

 "Yeah. Of course." Finn perches on a rock, one thigh straining against another rock to prop him there. His hair is pearled with water droplets from when he splashed his head. Poe takes a minute to appreciate all of this before he says, " She asked me some questions, but mostly she just sat and listened _at_ me, you know, the way she does, while I ran my mouth. But eventually I came back around to something you said. Two things. One on the night they signed the Accords, you remember that?"

 "I remember the night," Finn says gravely.

 Poe grins, can't help himself. "After that. We were talking about, you know, 'what are we gonna do now,' and you said something about resisting the same people, just without the big ships and the budget. And then back in Roel, you said I make it easier for people to do what they have to do--I snapped at you for it, I think--"

 "Yeah, a little--"

 "--I'm sorry. I would be sorry even if you'd been wrong, but you were right. I'm good at that, and I like it. It's what made me good at intelligence work. And the League doesn't work the exact same way as the Republic did, and anyway there are a lot of worlds out there that the Republic ignored, or fucked over, and there's just--Rey helped me see that there's a lot of things that have to happen in a lot of places, in order for things not to stay bad or get worse." Finn's nodding, and Poe feels encouraged: "And I might be able to help with that. Do what I do, but for whoever's trying to doing things differently. Better."

 "They would be in charge of it," Finn says. "The people there. You'd just boost what they were doing?"

 "Try to, yeah. It's not a job with, you know, wages and a name, but it's--something I could do. Make things more possible for people."

 "That's what you do for me," Finn says.

 Poe can't speak.

 "Come on, you knew that, you had to know that. Twelve years in? You can't have thought it was just the damn TIE fighter. It's every day since, whatever I'm doing. Whether we're together or not."

 "I didn't think of it like that," Poe says. "You're so good, and that's you. It's all you. It wouldn't occur to me to take credit for that."

"Sure, it's me. I'm not giving you credit. But me with you is different. Better. I'm gonna say better."

 "I would kiss you," Poe says, "but you look a little precarious there, and I don't wanna knock you into the water."

 "Finish the story first," Finn says, his tone making it more gentle than it might have been.

 "That's mostly it. We drank a lot of tea. She said to give you her love. Oh, and Notta and Lowball send greetings. Margali left the Temple after a while, she said it wasn't for her, but Rey says she thinks she'll be fine."

 "Ex-trooper Jedi," Finn says. "I like it."

 "You ever sorry you didn't go that way?"

 "I'm not sorry about anything about the way I went. You think I'd be contaminating this stream for people further down if I put my feet in it? I washed them this morning."

 "You're probably good."

 Finn performs some contortions to get his boots off, which sends Poe back into appreciation mode, and sinks his bare feet in the stream with a deep sigh. For a little while there's only the sound of the water running over the rocks, and a couple of birds that start up again in the silence. Talking is exhausting, and so is feeling things, and he still isn't sure what Finn's feeling exactly. Poe lets his head hang down, his spine round out, feels the sweat on his shirt ride into new positions. He hears Finn say, "This work, you'd have to travel around to do it?"

 He lifts his head. "Yeah, sometimes. But there's no reason I couldn't do some of it wherever you are. There's probably something everywhere, you know? Even here. Like what Jennicet does."

 "I don't want to stay here," Finn says, and his voice has that note in it again, the one from before. The trapped sound.

 Poe sighs. "I wasn't really suggesting staying here, that was just an example. I could go with you when you go back to Roel, if you wanted. That world has other settlements on it, right? I wouldn't have to be breathing down your neck the whole time, and anyway it'd be different now that I have work to do."

 "You _don't_ want to stay here."

 "No. Not at all. They drive me crazy too."

 "They don't drive me crazy," Finn says, exasperated. "I don't understand them. I don't understand how you are with them. I can tell I'm not being fair, but I don't know how to be. I don't know enough."

 Poe thinks about this very carefully. He's no longer stupid enough to think that this is the make or break, that anything he says that he actually _would_ say could end what they have. But he wants to let Finn know that the two of them don't need to feel the same way about everything, that who they were before their stories converged shapes who they are now but doesn't contain it. And he still, a little, wants to defend himself and his family, to say--which is true--that the work he's talking about doing, the person Finn thinks he can be, he can be because of his family, because of what they needed from him and what he needed from them.

 There's no one thing he can say that will do all that.

 He could short-circuit the entire conversation by kneeling in front of Finn, right in the streambed, and taking Finn's cock to the back of his throat like the cold stream water.

 But they'd still have to have it another time.

 He says, "The way you learn things. It's amazing, you amaze me, not like it's a surprise, it's just amazing. But if you can't learn this, or"--he swallows--"if you don't want to, it's okay, as long you trust me that it's--that you--" Fucking hell.

 Finn comes down off the rock where he's sitting and walks upstream a little, picking his way. They face each other. Finn says, "Yes I do."

 "I do too. Trust you."

 "Yeah. I understand _that_ ," Finn says, and leans close, brushes their lips together just barely. A promise. Poe brings his arms up and presses Finn close, and they kiss and kiss until Finn says, "My feet are getting numb."

 They break apart; Finn climbs out of the water and frowns at his boots. Poe says, "You want my shirt to dry them on?"

 Finn eyes him. "Is this a ploy?"

 "I did bring you out here with certain intentions. We should probably find a place where you can keep your balance."

 "Big talk," Finn says. "Upstream or down?"

 "Dry your feet first, put your boots on. You don't really wanna be barefoot out of the water here." Poe shrugs out of the shirt and tosses it over. Finn gives him a long look and breaks into a grin that's like the sun piercing the canopy.

 They walk upstream until they find a flat rock that's big enough to stand _and_ kneel on, and Finn cracks up when Poe takes his shirt back and folds it into a pad for his knees. "Hey, I'm not as young as I used to be. And I plan to be down here as long as you want me to." For years. Forever.

 Finn stands in front of him, looking down. "You said I could fuck your mouth. You still want me to?"

 "More than anything," and at that moment, it's the truth. Finn nods, getting into character, undoes the front of his pants with one hand and gets a grip on Poe's hair with the other. Poe licks and sucks him the rest of the way hard, already feeling light and delirious, a feeling that intensifies and almost lifts him off his knees when the head of Finn's dick hits the back of his throat and he opens to it like an offering.

 Everything is so simple when they're like this. He's both there and not there, just the sensation of being filled and used and needed, just a pathway to Finn's pleasure, and both the thought and the feeling of it soak through every nerve, as he keeps his teeth out of the way and his jaw starts to ache, as Finn's cock slides over his tongue, as Finn's whispers turn profane and then incoherent and then all of a sudden he's lifted, sharply, his head yanked back. Finn's eyes meet his and come spurts over his face and chest, blood heat, he'd sag but Finn's grip on his hair is strong and he can notice now that his mouth is free that he's hard and wanting.

 Finn sinks down next to him and gathers him close, kisses him with a bump of noses and scrape of teeth, closes a warm hand around his cock. He comes like that, fast and still kneeling, Finn's mouth on his, Finn's come still streaking his face and caught on the hair on his chest, Finn's arm around him.

 "You okay?" Finn asks. "That was a little more..."

 "Yeah. Good." He thinks maybe that's all he can manage, but something was missing from what he said before and he wants to make sure it's clear. "For life."

 Finn hasn't survived this long by being slow on the uptake. "Our lives, you mean." Poe says yes, and Finn says yes. Poe presses his face into the hollow of Finn's neck and shoulder and they stay like that, awkwardly entwined, until Poe starts to lose circulation in the foot that's trapped under him. He kisses Finn's temple and stands, wipes himself down with his shirt, rinses it and passes it over. His foot prickles and rolls and he almost loses his balance; Finn's hand clamps down on his arm to steady him.

 Poe's shirt dries in the wind on the way back to the house, but the two of them must look like they've been doing exactly what they've been doing. Kes acknowledges this with an angled eyebrow before saying, "Want dinner?"

 "You cooked?" Poe asks skeptically.

 "Hell, no. It's leftovers from last night."

 He fills two more bowls and motions them to the table. Poe looks at his father: Kes is broad and strong and unbowed, but he's not young, and Poe lets himself see it. Carves it into his mind for when they leave: the smell of the evening air, the buzz and orangey color of the warm lights, the grain of Kes's voice. He asks Finn how their day was; Finn replies with a highly edited version and asks about Kes's day, and Kes eagerly talks about the new sensor system he's installed in the canals. Poe can almost hear Finn's planning brain click into gear, and as the two of them wonk out together about the way the irrigation system's built to work with the seasonal changes and the lie of the land, he tastes the salt and herbs and oil and roots of home.

 

_... And the end of all our exploring_

_Will be to arrive where we started_

_And know the place for the first time._


End file.
